I believe the 1980s was all about appearance, money and "power
dressing." The consumer was suddenly unimportant as media,
photographers, and stylists went too far in seeking to shock and
surprise each other through unreal supermodels.

We are facing a new era where a designer has once more to be in contact
with the consumer and make them feel fashion can be fun and easy.
Therefore I try to do interesting, personal clothes—easy to mix
and at affordable prices. There is a new generation of women with a
completely new attitude toward fashion. I believe clothes are an
important and interesting way of communicating; therefore it is
important to make the "user" comfortable and secure, to
bring out the best in them.

Silhouette is my main preoccupation and everything is in the cut and the
fabric. Details are secondary and should be avoided as much as possible.

—Marcel Marongiu

***

Marcel Marongiu sees fashion design as a genuine means of communication.
He wants people to be able to live out their fantasies by wearing his
clothes and to discover what he terms "la vie plus belle,"
the beautiful life.

Marongiu designs clothes that are classically elegant yet also up to
date, sexy, and carefree. His style is always strong and pronounced, the
cut always clean and streamlined, emphasizing the contours and shape of
the human body. Stretch fabrics and natural classic fabrics, often with
a small Lycra percentage, help him achieve these silhouettes. His
customer is a young, modern women, slightly tongue-in-cheek and sexy,
who refuses to dress expensively. Marongiu targets this clientéle
in a logical, businesslike way, and in the short time since the
company's inception in 1991, the clothes are now sold in many
boutiques throughout Sweden, Great Britain, Italy, France, Japan, and
the United States.

Marongiu draws his inspiration from various sources; his favorite
designers are Jacques Fath and Christian Dior, two men who had a

huge influence on 1940s and 1950s fashion, a period to which Marcel
particularly adheres when designing. He adores hard rock music and in
1991 even named his company after the title of an Aerosmith album,
Permanent Vacation.
Other favorite muses are painter Nicholas de Stael, writer Graham
Greene, and filmmakers Martin Scorsese and Peter Greenaway.

Comparing two Marongiu collections perhaps gives an indication of the
designer's style. The spring-summer 1994 collection was a mixture
of three styles: renaissance in the fluidity and lightness of the
materials, baroque in its generous volume, and classical in its Greek
and Roman influences. Constructed mainly around a basic dress shape,
Marcel wanted to create a collection that was soft, serene, and human,
in colors making reference to nature—reds and chestnuts, the
blues of dusk and twilight, and the colors of sand, beige, and white.
The fall-winter collection for 1994-95 moved on from the ruralistic
feeling of spring-summer and was inspired by the lifestyle and
atmosphere of European cities between World War I and World War II and
contrasted with shapes inspired by the Ottoman Empire. Usingstriped
fabrics, Prince of Wales checks, mock astrakhan, and pleats, Marongiu
created baggy silhouettes and distinctively superimposed tunics, smocks,
or waistcoats on dresses or trousers. He also introduced colors of
orange, green, and saffron yellow to his usual palette of burgundies,
aubergines, and grays.

Marongiu prides himself on the fact that his clothes are 100-percent
French in production. The sample collection is produced in his Paris
studio but is manufactured in the Vendée, retail prices are very
reasonable for a designer label. As well as clothes, the company has
diversified by producing a small line of accessories, shoes, necklaces,
belts, boots, bags, and hats, all in the distinctive Marongiu style. As
Paris is the base of Marongiu's activities, he is now established
as one of the city's leading young designers. He looks set to
expand his business further, because Paris, as he describes it, is a
present-day city, full of energy and romance.

Marongiu reached the breaking point with Swedish backers in 1996 when he
vacated his contract and reestablished his firm with Japanese backing.
Within two years, he opened a Paris boutique on the exclusive rue
Saint-Honoré and established his first vendor in Nagoya, Japan. In
his ninth year in the business, he debuted a first collection of leather
goods. In support of the Swedish fashion maven and his impact on world
tastes, Stockholm's Design Museum honored him with a
retrospective exhibit.

In 1998, when the emerging trend aimed for minimalism and dressing down
with flair and attitude, Marongiu lauded a new freedom from tradition.
His wearable European day outfits produced the ease and comfort that
women demanded. Of the push for simplification, CNN cited his faith in a
voguish breeziness, "It enabled us…to have a new approach
to fashion."

The year 1999 saw Marongiu at his best. He branched out into understated
asymmetrical Artoria porcelainware for Limoges, plus cushions and
lingerie, and snagged
Elle Sweden's
Designer of the Year award. In Paris, he celebrated the first decade of
his Composites brand. He insisted on New York City for unveiling his
10th fashion collection. According to the
Boston Herald,
he expressed confidence in the switch from European venues, "You
just have to be in the right place at the right moment. And New York is
the right moment."

In the trendy new millennium, when he introduced a secondary line,
Marongiu avoided artistic pretension to focus on chic that sells.
Layering military with rock, he centered jersey frocks with soldier
belts, the indispensable accessory for the with-it Marongiu look. For
everyday attire, he topped crisp cotton skirts with wrapped bodices. His
theme held steady for affordable goods that span the seasons.

—Kevin Almond;

updated by Mary Ellen Snodgrass

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